Next fall, when Denver’s Children’s Hospital moves to its new building on the Fitzsimons campus, its Child Health Clinic will remain a crucial – if sometimes overlooked – component of the facility. The clinic will move from the far reaches of the second floor in the old facility to just inside the front door of the new hospital, a move that is symbolically appropriate.

The Children’s Hospital Foundation has applied for funding for the Child Health Clinic from this year’s Post/News Season to Share campaign.

“The primary patient population is underserved, kids on Medicaid,” said Kathy Crawley, vice president of Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Steve Winesett, the foundation’s president and chief operating officer, said the patients at the clinic “are kids who otherwise would not be getting consistent medical care before something happens to them. (The clinic) takes small problems and tries to keep them small, before they turn into something very large and very expensive and very taxing on the families.

“There are a number of kids out there, and a number of families who do not have great access to primary care, he said. “So they show up in the emergency room of Children’s or Denver Health with a wicked ear infection that could have been caught way back, and it’s a huge burden on the system.”

In part because only about 5 percent of patients come from families with private health insurance, Children’s receives a low rate of reimbursement for clinic services. Winesett said the clinic “always runs at a deficit, but it’s something that Children’s is very committed to.”

In addition to providing routine care for minor illnesses, the clinic provides immunizations, physical exams and vision and hearing tests and screenings. A young mother’s clinic provides help for teenage mothers and their babies, and there is help available for children in international adoptions and foster care.

The clinic, which receives about 18,000 visits annually from about 8,000 children, also serves as a major practice clinic for pediatric residents and family-medicine residents, plus other medical students, working with attending physicians.

“Having the residents go through a stint in the Child Health Clinic encourages them to learn the whole (process) of care for kids,” Winesett said. “So many of the people who come out of Children’s from the educational side are sub-specialists. They might be a cardiac surgeon or an oncologist, so having the experience of caring for a family while they’re here in residence gives their whole education a different dimension.”

How to donate

Post-News Season to Share, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, gave more than $1.73 million to 56 agencies last year serving children and people who are hungry, homeless or in need of medical care. Donations are matched 50 cents to the dollar, and 100 percent of the donations go to the charitable agencies. To contribute, please see the coupon on this page, call 888-683-4483 or visit seasontoshare.com.

A graduate of Wheat Ridge High School and the University of Colorado, former Denver Post writer Terry Frei has been named a state's sportswriter of the year seven times -- four times in Colorado and three times in Oregon. He's the author of seven books, including the novel "Olympic Affair" about Colorado's Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion; and "Third Down and a War to Go," about the 1942 football national champion Wisconsin Badgers and the players' subsequent World War II heroism.

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